The Blog Watcher writes...

The blogosphere is where it's at you know. In every issue we recommend recent entries on PR-based blogs from around the world. This week the PR challenge of those MP expenses scandals and why car firms should do more PR.

From A Close Second: The PR challenge of expenses scandals

Richard Houghton, Vice-Chairman of the PR Consultants Association, and a partner at B2B consultancy Carrot Communications, recently made some interesting observations about the efforts of various political types to justify their more questionable expenses claims. Writing on his personal blog, A Close Second, Houghton considers the PR challenge for those who have been caught up in the media’s recent onslaught of dodgy expense claim stories (dodgy in the sense, of course, that they normally comply with parliamentary rules, but seem like an excessive use of tax payer’s money nonetheless).

He first refers to Tory MP Eric Pickles and his attempts to justify claiming expenses for a second home in London despite the fact his constituency home is only 40 miles from Westminister. Houghton: “Pickles’ laughable defence on ‘Question Time’ was one of the worst I’ve ever seen. Apparently the audience didn’t understand that Westminster works like clockwork so he has to be there on time; public transport is unreliable and as a result he had to work really long days! The audience, with good reason, simply laughed at him”.

Houghton was more impressed with the way the husband of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith – Richard Timney – dealt with those embarrassing and much reported revelations that he had charged the rental of two ‘adult films’ to an internet account paid for by his wife’s expenses. Houghton observes: “He handled the situation as best he could. He stepped outside the gate of his house, read a short statement, accepted the anger his actions will have created, said sorry repeatedly and then stepped back through the gate. Short, to the point and direct. I do not think that it will save his wife’s job but if you had to advise him this is what you’d suggest”.

You can read Richard Houghton’s blog here

From Tim Dyson’s blog: Car firms should do more PR

“Context Analytics recently published a paper showing that for certain brands PR was way more effective than advertising. The brands most affected were those which had ‘high involvement’ products such as computers. High involvement products are ones where consumers typically do quite a bit of research before they make the purchase.

I’d put cars firmly into that category and yet unless I’m blind I’d suggest that most car makers have done a pretty poor job on their PR. Instead they seem determined to convince people using TV adverts that they should rush out and buy their new vehicle. I’m of course basing this thesis on little real science. I did do a Google news search on major car brands and if you ignore all the bad articles about how deeply troubled the industry is, you see little that appears to be the result of a PR campaign.

A great example to me of a missed opportunity is Toyota’s launch of the new Prius. The car doesn’t go on sale until ‘late Spring’ but it is already on the Toyota website. Given how popular this car is I’d have expected there to be a lot of PR outside the traditional trade press. As yet I’ve seen nothing and as Prius owner (or Pious as a friend of mine calls them) I tend to notice when images of the less than attractive vehicle appear in the paper.

For the record then I’d strongly advise GM, Ford et al to forget their expensive ads and focus on getting the argument across using the media and social media. Assuming Context’s study is accurate, they’ll spend less and sell more”.

Read more from Tim’s A View On PR From Silicon Valley blog here

Posted Friday April 10 2009